Self-Discovery
by AGoldenCharm
Summary: Tina has struggled for months—no, years—with who she was as a person, and it's taken her a long time to realize how much it was affecting her life. When Mike comes back into town in honor of the Glee Club reunion before the club get shut down, Tina has made many new discoveries—about her friends, her interests, and most importantly—herself.


**A/N: A continuation of Home For The Holidays and Revelation. Please read them if you haven't already!**  
**It's been a really, _really_ long time. But I miss Tike. And I hope everyone else does too.**

* * *

It is no secret that Tina has been a little on the emotionally uncertain side lately—pretty much from the moment senior year started. And even though she is in no place to deny the claims that she's been prone to shedding a tear or two at the mention of "graduation" or "college" or even "summer", Tina can't help but feel like everyone has been a little unfair to her in the past few months. Blaine has been holding her hand in the hallways and continuously asks her if she's feeling okay and Sam has been doing more impressions than usual around her, presumably to try to make her laugh. And while she appreciates their support—truly, she does—lately her tears have been more out of frustration than out of sorrow.

The most aggravating thing about her senior year isn't that she hasn't had enough solos (as Artie often assumes) or that she hasn't gotten into her top choice college yet (as her parents _always_ say). The most aggravating thing about her senior year is that this was supposed to be the moment when she finally figured something out about her identity, her_self_.

But no, everything still felt out of place and wrong, and even though she and Artie had repaired their friendship after their big blowup a couple months ago, she still couldn't get it out of her head that she had spent _months_ trying to come across as the confident, newly emboldened individual that could take senior year and the Glee Club by storm, but all people had got from that was that she was being a bitch.

And maybe Artie had said a lot of things in a rush of adrenaline in that moment—calling her McKinley's biggest bitch—and maybe he didn't really mean it at the end of the day, but that word still rung in her head nearly every day.

_Is this who I've become? Is this what people think of me? Is this what people will _remember_ of me?_

But she doesn't have time to worry about that anymore, Tina muses to herself as she walks down the hallway toward the choir room. Not anymore. Besides, she's walked away from those instances—the times when her prom dress was ruined and when one of her best friends had labeled her a bitch—and moved on. There were bigger things to think about. The only real issue in her mind—in _any _of their minds—is losing Nationals. And the end of New Directions.

The end. She still isn't ready to believe it, and the Glee Club has been threatened with the chance of disbanding so many times now that part of her half-expects it to all end up okay anyway. As though some miracle will suddenly drop several thousand dollars at their feet so that Sue Sylvester won't be able to cut their program from the school. And even though she's cried about it and thought about it for hours on end, she's started to feel hints of closure from the whole ordeal. It still breaks her heart to think that no one will ever be able to sing in Glee Club at McKinley again, but her heart also feels waxier. More resilient.

Because what choice do they have but to move forward? Marley had been talking about a community theater program in Lima that she was planning on joining, and Ryder mentioned that he would take every opportunity to perform at the Lima Bean's open mics. It was like everyone in the New Directions had learned how to take a horrible situation and adapt.

As she runs her fingers along the lockers that lead up to the most familiar room in the school, she starts to hear the voices coming from inside the room. She's late on purpose today. For many reasons.

One, she was doing her makeup quiz for calculus, since she had missed the original quiz date due to an alarming fever that kept her bedridden for three days straight.

Two, being in the choir room lately has made her entire body want to seize up—just the thought of the Glee Club getting disbanded petrified her, and what used to be fun rehearsals have rapidly turned into a somber chore.

And three, she had coordinated her entrance specifically so that it wouldn't coincide with Mike's.

_"Mike," Tina's voice is strained. Her face is still barely an inch away from his. He can feel each of her exhalations against his skin and there's something enrapturing about the way she can't seem to regain control. "I'm not ready to be over you."_

_"Me neither," he breathes into her ear. "I don't think I ever was."_

Mr. Schue's wedding had been such a blur. In a way that felt like a foreign dream. It had been _months_ since she had tasted his lips, and then suddenly, they were the only things she knew—the only things she _wanted_ to know in that moment.

And hours after that kiss—or rather, that long series of kisses that could have lasted fifteen minutes or thirty or even forty-five, for all she knew—they had collapsed next to each other on the hotel floor, unable to figure out what had just happened.

_"You live in Chicago," she had finally mustered, her voice barely over a whisper._

_"And you live in Lima," he had conceded, tightening his lips a little as he ran his fingers through his unkempt hair._

_"We ended things."_

_"I know."_

_They were silent. Tina could feel her entire body buzzing._

_"Damn you."_

_"Excuse me?"_

_"Damn you," she repeated. "I worked so damn hard to get over you."_

_"Are you?"_

_"Am I what?"_

_"Over me?" Mike's eyes were round, almost pleading._

_She stared at him in disbelief. "Are you kidding me?"_

_Silence again._

_"What will make this easiest for us?" Tina finally asked, quite aware of how desperate her voice sounded._

_"Do we have to pick the easiest choice?"_

_"No, but Mike... the fact of the matter is, you'll be heading back to Chicago. Then what? Then what are we supposed to do?"_

_She couldn't deal with toying with the idea of long distance again. They had talked that prospect into the ground. It was too much to unearth it again._

She opens the choir room door, immediately overwhelmed by the sounds of Kurt and Rachel gabbing, the signature sound of Mercedes' warm-up exercises, and the hum of conversations from the group—two times its usual size. She spots Mike right away, sitting next to Blaine and making some sort of animated hand gesture that looks as though he's miming hitting himself in the forehead, although she's not really sure what he's trying to show. But as soon as she enters the room, his eyes dart toward her, though no more than for a fraction of a second. Then, he's back to goofing off with Blaine.

"Tina!" Mercedes waves her over, indicating the chair next to her. "Just like old times." The grin on Mercedes' face makes Tina ache—the kind of ache she hasn't felt since the seniors left over a year ago.

_"We can try it," Mike said softly._

_They were supposed to be meeting everyone else in the lobby ten minutes ago, but this seemed like a conversation that couldn't wait. Tina took a deep breath._

_"What about all the concerns we had about it a few months back? Are those no longer on the table?"_

_Mike furrowed his brow, as though searching for words. "I think I've realized that I'd rather deal with those concerns than deal with not being with you."_

Tina distracts herself by engaging in a conversation with Rachel, Artie, and Sam about... well, Rachel, but the easy thing about it is that Rachel can usually talk enough so that no one would really notice if she drops out of the conversation. But she does make the effort to be included in the Rachel-Berry-on-Broadway gushing.

"Are you nervous?" Artie asks, beaming up at Rachel, who has returned with somewhat of a different vibe to her—maybe it's the big city, or maybe it's the Broadway future, but she seems... different.

"I mean, like a little," Rachel shrugs, giggling.

"Of course she is!" Tina beams, snapping out of her little trance. "It's her Broadway debut!"

Tina is happy for Rachel. In fact, she's thrilled for her. She had long since left her Rachel-envy behind her—ever since graduation, ever since applying to Brown's TAPS program. She has big goals, and none of them are to become a mirror image of Rachel.

Brown. Yes, the waitlist still stung, and Tina had been checking her email obsessively lately, even though the waitlist decisions weren't due to be released for another two weeks. But even if she got in, Rhode Island was so far away...

_"Is this something you want to try?" Mike had asked softly._

___They were sitting side-by-side with their knees bent and their hands on the ground. His right pinky barely grazed by her left one. At her words, he shifted his hand over so that his hand was very deliberately on top of hers. She felt the hand squeeze and it was like the rush of emotions she had been damming up for the past few months came bubbling up to the surface._

_She raised a finger to her lips, which were still swollen from their kiss._

_"What happens if it doesn't work out?"_

_"Why do you think it might not work out?" _

_"Let's say it doesn't," Tina said imploringly. "The best thing about these past couple of months is that we ended on a good note. We ended without resentment or bitterness or anything. But what happens if we try this long distance thing and something horrible happens and then we end up hating each other?"_

_Mike doesn't answer at first, and she can tell he's thinking about his answer. He always gets quiet when he's really raking his brain for a good response, and his bottom lip would always pinch as he pondered. She smiled faintly despite herself._

_"I think—I think the fact that you care so much about whether or not we'll end up hating each other says something."_

_Tina frowned. "What do you mean?"_

_"If you didn't think this relationship had potential, if you didn't think it could last longer than a month, a year—then maybe you wouldn't be so afraid to try. Because the longer we'd be physically apart, the more that could possibly be go wrong," he suggested. "And if you didn't want this, maybe you'd turn me down point-blank."_

"It means so much to me that so many of you came back on such short notice to celebrate the past few years," Mr. Schue says in his solemn voice, his eyes downcast. "To sit in this room one last time and sing. Your assignment is to sing one of the songs we sang in here but reinvent it in some way."

When Mr. Schue gets emotional, Tina can usually feel her throat clenching too. She fights the urge to look over at Mike, who is a few seats over. She's been doing that a lot lately. Fighting urges.

_"Maybe I do want it," Tina said softly, turning a little so that her body was angled more in his direction. "But Mike... I'm applying to Brown—"_

_"That's amazing!" Mike said immediately, breaking out into a grin that lifted the mood considerably. "For performing arts?"_

_"Yeah, their theater and performing arts program. But... but it's my first choice."_

_"Is that why you're concerned? Because Chicago is far away from Rhode Island?" Mike seemed genuinely surprised._

_"Well, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly why I'm concerned."_

_Mike placed a hand on her thigh, leaning in close. His face drew nearer and nearer until she could feel his skin brushing against her own. His breath was warm, heavy. And with that, he kissed her. Slow, long, and deep._

"What are you doing for your revamped song?"

Rehearsal is over and most of the New Directions have cleared out of the room already, presumably out to their cars in the parking lot. Tina had decided to stick around in somewhat of a trance as she clears the sheet music off of the piano and begins to stack them properly to put away, only to realize that Mike had not left with the rest of them.

"I don't know if I have one in mind," she says softly, concentrating hard on cleaning up so that she doesn't have to look him dead in the eye.

"You could do Florence," he suggests, approaching the piano and placing both hands on it, as though searching for something to do. "Or something from _Grease_."_  
_

"Mike, I'm sorry," Tina blurts out, unable to make small talk for any longer. "I'm so, so, sorry."

_When she felt like she had to break away from the kiss to avoid doing something truly stupid, Tina could feel her insides lurching. Their inhales and exhales were out of sync, yet they were equally out of breath and disoriented._

_"All we can do is try," Mike had said softly, his face still dangerously close to hers. "I'm trusting us to work for this. Are you?"_

_Tina bit her lip. She knew it was a matter of whether or not the two of them would be able to work toward a relationship—especially a long-distance one. But something about the way Mike had already stepped into this whole new world of college and adulthood and _not_ high school made her feel even more distant from him—beyond just the physical distance. Something about the way she felt stuck in the confines of McKinley and didn't feel safe or ready to unfold in the "real world". Hell, she hadn't figured herself out in the teeny little town of Lima, Ohio. How could she be expected to figure herself out in a city she had never been in?_

_"I feel so lost right now," she said, unable to meet his eye, choosing instead to turn away and look at the ground._

_"At McKinley?"_

_"At McKinley. I can't figure out who I am or where I belong. Nothing- nothing seems to fit."_

_Everything she had been doing so far senior year had felt awkward and out of place. Being a Cheerio, being more like Rachel, vying for prom queen. Did she have the mental capacity to worry about a boyfriend miles and miles away right now? Did she feel comfortable enough in her own skin to confidently walk to class, bursting with the knowledge that Mike was out there somewhere, loving her despite the distance?_

_"We- we fit."_

_She took a deep breath, feeling the impending dread from having to give the answer she didn't want to give._

_"I need more time."_

"Why are you sorry?" Mike's voice is measured, level. He sounds neither resentful nor annoyed, and Tina can't figure out if she's more relieved or frustrated by it. Part of her wants to thank him for it. The other part of her wants him to be more upset with her.

"When someone says they need more time, they usually mean a day. A week. It's been months," Tina wrings her hands. "Did you hate me for not contacting you after the wedding?"

"You needed time," he says slowly, tapping his finger against the piano. "I wanted to respect that."

"Why? Why did you bother? You could have- you could have gone dating new people, you could have moved on—"

"Well," he shrugs, "I did go on a few dates. Nothing serious. But the way I understood it, life was moving on. But that didn't mean I couldn't expect to hear an answer from you someday."

Tina isn't sure whether or not to feel stunned by this. Granted, it would have been incredibly selfish of her to believe that Mike was simply sitting in his dorm in Chicago, waiting by the phone for her call. He had a life of his own—one that involved dance school and new friends and a thousand other things that killed her not to be able to hear about—and he had every right to avoid pressing pause on it all.

"Can I ask you something?" Mike pipes up after a moment of silence.

Tina nods.

"Tell me about senior year?" His eyes are searching hers, and she can feel a lump forming in her throat. She knows why he's asking this.

"I'm no longer a Cheerio. I won prom queen—sort of. Artie called me the school's biggest bitch. We didn't win at Nationals. And I got wait-listed at Brown," Tina says all in one breath.

Mike says nothing.

Her mind wanders—to Blaine and Sam, to her partial solo at Nationals, to her recent award of excellence at a McKinley honor student, to her recent recital at the elderly care center she volunteered at, where she sang Frank Sinatra songs for nearly half an hour. She smiles wanly.

"But I'm okay."

Mike breaks out into a smile—one that makes Tina want to wrap her arms around him right away and sink into something real again. For months, she had been thinking about what it'd be like to go back to their high school relationship, what it'd be like to revert back to what she knew and loved over a year ago. But now, she feels like there is only room to think about what moving _forward _will look like.

"I debated for a long time whether or not to call you," Tina says with a small shrug. "And I didn't know this was going to happen—that Glee Club would be over and that Mr. Schue was going to invite everyone back."

"Then— then what were you thinking?" Mike sounds worried. Or at the very least, concerned.

Tina hops onto the piano, sitting on its widest part so that her legs swung over the edge. She looks closely at Mike, whose forearms are inches away from her legs. "I was thinking that I was going to stop forcing myself into situations. Forcing myself to be a Cheerio, forcing myself to be prom queen, forcing myself to be someone that I didn't understand. And forcing myself into a relationship from high school."

Mike's eyes clouds, and Tina has a feeling he thinks she's poising herself to turn him down.

"I still have a lot to learn about myself," Tina says as pointedly as she can. "And, well— I can't believe the most important part of my high school experience is almost over," she gestures to the choir room as a whole. "Everything about this helped define me, but I wasn't happy with the definition. Like I told you, I felt lost."

"And now?"

"Now—now I'm waiting for Brown," she sighs. "Now, I'm attempting to make the last moments of every Glee Club rehearsal matter. Now, I'm asking myself what I can do to learn about myself in the future. And... now, I'm glad you came back."

Mike's face is slightly puckered, as if deep in thought.

"I guess I was waiting for us to cross paths again," Tina says with a small smile. "Whether that meant seeing you in the summer when you came from school or after college someday—way down the line. I think- I think I want to start fresh."

"What do you mean?"

"I was so stuck in the past, Mike. I wanted to go back to our high school relationship, but the truth of the matter was that nothing would look like that again. I'm sure you've changed a lot in college and I think I've changed too. But I think we have the chance to start a new relationship. A different one."

"To hit restart?"

Tina reaches out to run one hand along the curve of his jawline, feeling a rush of old and new emotions all at once. His head turns ever so slightly so that his lips brush the palm of her hand, as though by reflex.

"Not necessarily. Not completely, anyway," she says slowly, resolutely. "But a chance to look ahead instead of forcing ourselves into the past. If there's anything I've learned from having to be okay with the Glee Club getting cut is that when your hands are tied, the only thing dwelling will do is make things hurt more."

Mike's smile is big and achingly beautiful. "I have just the first date idea in mind. It'll be great, I—"

Tina cuts him off, pressing her lips firmly—more resolutely than she had felt about anything in the past couple of months—against his, submerged in a kiss that, for the first time in much too long, felt like exactly what she wanted.


End file.
